A collection of Civil War-era letters written by Hans Christian Heg, who grew up in southeastern Norway, migrated to Wisconsin, and traveled to the gold fields of California and the mining camps of the West, only to return to the Badger State to lead a regiment of Scandinavian immigrants--the Fifteenth Wisconsin--in the Civil War. His achievements are well known among Norwegian-Americans but little known outside that circle. However, his life story typifies the processes of transition and service to his new country that have marked the lives of thousands of immigrants. The many personal accounts by the soldiers of the Fifteenth Wisconsin Regiment, penned in battlefield letters to family and friends, remain the most evocative and moving contributions, valuable primary source material to a wrenching national experience. These intimate narratives relate both the horrors of the conflict and the loyalty of the young men, many of them recent arrivals from Norway, to what they consistently
